The Stage

Trio of Edinburgh venues at risk as owner goes bust

Published Wednesday 3 November 2010 at 15:39 by Thom Dibdin

Key Edinburgh fringe venue, the Roxy Art House, has closed and two further venues have been put up for sale after the 105-year-old charity that owns them went into administration.

Edinburgh University Settlement first put the Roxy up for sale in October, together with the Forest Cafe on Bristo Place and the GRV on Guthrie Street, with a combined price tag of almost £3 million.

The Forest Cafe is best known as the home of the award-winning Forest Fringe during August. The Forest Cafe and the Roxy were both described as a “development opportunity” in the particulars, leading to concerns that they might be converted into accommodation.

However, a sequestration order on the EUS was granted by Edinburgh Sheriff Court on October 27, forcing the charity into administration, with PricewaterhouseCoopers appointed as liquidators. The EUS-run Roxy was then closed last Thursday and its staff made redundant. The building has been a key fringe venue for many years, first as Pleasance Over The Road, and latterly as an independent venue with a year-round programme of events.

The Forest Cafe is still open. One of the centre’s founding members, Chris Palmer, told The Stage: “We are keen to buy the building and have launched a serious campaign initiative to try and raise money to do that - or at the very least support us if we have to move to a different premises.”

Palmer said their current rent had been subsidised by the EUS and that the main hall of the one-time church would attract a commercial rent of some £40,000 to £50,000 during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe alone.

“I am sad and disappointed that EUS has gone bust,” Palmer added. “They have been wonderful landlords and have supported us financially over the time that we have been here. It would be marvellous if new people bought the building and were keen to do the same, but that is perhaps unlikely.”

Founding member of the Forest Fringe Andy Field told The Stage that the company would try to remain at the venue in any way it could. However, he promised that whatever happened to the building, the Forest Fringe would be back in Edinburgh in 2011.

Field said: “The thing about Forest Fringe is that the community of artists we work with is an imaginative and resilient organisation. It has always had to be that and I have supreme confidence that in some way, shape or form, we will be in Edinburgh next year.”